As was to be expected, the November/December edition of Post aus meiner Küche* centred around the theme of Christmas. The week for sending out our goodies was the last week of November. It goes against every fiber of my being to do any Christmas cookie baking before the first of Advent, so I put on my thinking cap for some non-baking ideas. I wanted to include something typically German and something typically British, so in the end I settled for Rumkugeln (chocolate balls with a hint of rum) and Peppermint Creams.

The husband has recently been experimenting with different Seed snacks, so he also contributed a portion of his ‘mostly maple’ flavour, which tastes like Christmas in a box. To round off the Christmas package, I included a small bag of ‘Bratapfel’ (baked apple) flavoured tea and used my newly acquired wax decorating skills to make a PAMK candle.

Here’s the recipe for the Rumkugeln. Recipes for Peppermint Creams and Seed Snacks to follow later in the week.

Ingredients

200g dark chocolate, chopped

100g unsalted butter, cubed and at room temperature

2 tablespoons cocoa powder

4 tablespoons rum

200g ground almonds

50-100g icing sugar

chocolate sprinkles

Directions

Melt the chocolate in a bowl set over a saucepan of gently boiling water. Set aside to cool a little.

Whip together the butter, cocoa powder and rum.

Stir the melted chocolate in to the mixture.

Stir in the ground almonds.

Your mixture will still be quite wet now. Start by adding 50g of icing sugar. Keep adding more sugar until your mixture starts to firm up into a dough.

Form small balls by rolling chunks of the dough between your hands.

Roll the balls in chocolate sprinkles.

Leave the chocolate balls to set, then refrigerate in an airtight container.